The Brothers Karamazov

The book probes the possible roles of four brothers in the unresolved murder of their father, Fyodor Karamazov. At the same time, it carefully explores the personalities and inclinations of the brothers themselves. Their psyches together represent the full spectrum of human nature, the continuum of faith and doubt. Ultimately, this novel seeks to understand the real meaning of faith and existence and includes much beneficial philosophical and spiritual discussion that moves the reader towards faith.

Crime and Punishment (Recorded Books Edition)

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is universally regarded as one of literature's finest achievements, as the great Russian novelist explores the inner workings of a troubled intellectual. Raskolnikov, a nihilistic young man in the midst of a spiritual crisis, makes the fateful decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker, justifying his actions by relying on science and reason, and creating his own morality system. Dehumanized yet sympathetic, exhausted yet hopeful, Raskolnikov represents the best and worst elements of modern intellectualism. The aftermath of his crime and Petrovich's murder investigation result in an utterly compelling, truly unforgettable cat-and-mouse game. This stunning dramatization of Dostoevsky's magnum opus brings the slums of St. Petersburg and the demons of Raskolnikov's tortured mind vividly to life.

Crime and Punishment

In this intense detective thriller instilled with philosophical, religious, and social commentary, Dostoevsky studies the psychological impact upon a desperate and impoverished student when he murders a despicable pawnbroker, transgressing moral law to ultimately "benefit humanity".

Notes from the Underground

A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side.

In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground.

The Idiot [Blackstone]

Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."

The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 2: 1886

Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote - for few, if any, writers have ever done more - it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.”

The Metamorphosis: A New Translation by Susan Bernofsky

Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle millions of readers.

A Bend in the River

In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.

Resurrection

Tolstoy based Resurrection, the last of his novels, on a true story of a philanderer whose misuse of a beautiful young orphan girl leads to her ruin. Fate brings the two together many years later, and the meeting awakens the man's moral conscience. Anger, intimacy, forgiveness, and grace result.

The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 1: 1882–1885

A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number.

The Idiot

In The Idiot, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."

Orthodoxy

A serious attack against Christianity by well-known newspaper editor Robert Blatchford in 1903 impelled Chesterton to seize the gauntlet of refutation. His reply was immensely successful and was the early formation of his convincing credo that is so brilliantly and cogently argued in Orthodoxy, a masterwork that was published just five years later.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The famous Middle English poem by an anonymous Northern England poet is beautifully translated by fellow poet Simon Armitage in this edition. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman and Hall and first released on 19 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visitations of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

Ben-Hur

An American classic, Ben-Hur is both a vivid historical epic and the powerful story of one man's spiritual journey from slavery to vengeance to redemption. Born the son of a Jewish nobleman, Ben-Hur is condemned to the galleys for life for accidentally dislodging a piece of tile that falls on the Roman procurator. He is betrayed by his best friend, manages to escape his imprisonment, and gains revenge and glory before the cheering multitudes in the chariot races at the Roman circus in Antioch.

Stephen Fry Presents a Selection of Anton Chekhov's Short Stories

"Chekhov is probably better known in Britain for his plays than for his prose. For many, however, it is his short stories that mark the high water of his genius. It might at first glance be hard for those not used to his style of narrative to see what the fuss is about - and fuss there is: for most authors and lovers of literature Chekhov is incomparably the greatest short story writer there ever was."

James Joyce: Revised Edition

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential

Reading, studying, and praying the Psalms is God's means for teaching us what it means to be human: how to express our emotions and yearnings, how to reconcile our anger and our compassion, how to see our story in light of God's sweeping narrative of salvation. Wright provides the tools for understanding and incorporating these crucial verses into our own lives. His conclusion is simple: all Christians need to read, pray, sing, and live the Psalms.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

This famous work by Leo Tolstoy was one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. Such is the power of this novel that it was acclaimed by both Vladimir Nabokov and Mahatma Gandhi as the greatest in the whole of Russian literature. The novel tells the story of the life and death, at the age of 45, of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia - a miserable husband, proud father, and upwardly-mobile member of Russia's professional class, the object of Tolstoy's unremitting satire.

Publisher's Summary

The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's crowning life work and stands among the best novels in world literature.

The book probes the possible roles of four brothers in the unresolved murder of their father, Fyodor Karamazov. At the same time, it carefully explores the personalities and inclinations of the brothers themselves. Their psyches together represent the full spectrum of human nature, the continuum of faith and doubt.

Ultimately, this novel seeks to understand the real meaning of faith and existence and includes much beneficial philosophical and spiritual discussion that moves the reader towards faith. An incredibly enjoyable and edifying story!

The Brothers Karamazov is a wonderful book, and deserves to be read by many more people than might be willing to tackle the whole thing. This audiobook comes to the rescue. It's a remarkable achievement. It manages to get in every character, every incident, every philosophical digression I remember from two previous readings of the whole thing. And it does it without rushing. The pacing is steady throughout.

Unlike the four or five hour versions typical of abridged audiobooks, this one appears to operate at the level of the word and phrase rather than the level of the incident or chapter: a little snip here, a small excision there; it all adds up to a version with about 56% of the original text intact. It's more a condensation than an abridgment. Yes, you're not getting the whole thing, but you're getting a solid and thoughtful selection, not a hack job. The Grand Inquisitor is still there in all his confounding glory.

And you're getting Simon Vance. As a narrator of 19th century novels, Vance is nearly without peer. (He's pretty good with contemporary books as well, it's just that I've listened to more of the other.) Maybe not a man of a thousand voices, but he's got a couple hundred at least, and many of them are on display here - none of them for show, all of them in the service of the novel.

Of course, if you can and want to, you should eventually tackle the whole thing. But give this one a shot in the meantime. Or give it a shot if, like me, you've read it before and just want a somewhat faster "review." Except it doesn't feel like a review when you're listening to it. It feels like Dostoevsky.

The audiobook may be abridged, but at moments the narrator brought me almost to tears with how how he presented father Zosima. His voice is quite caring in the narrating throughout. He gets the female characters perfectly, especially Grushenka and you are able to distinguish one character from another, despite the numerous characters. I don't believe anyone should substitute reading this masterpiece by simply listening to the audiobook. However, to miss out on this narrator's telling of a beautiful story is to miss a performance of a lifetime. Believe me, I place no exaggeration on this at all.

A thoughtful, deep, engaging exploration of the human condition. Even abridged, it feels long, launching into seemingly endless reverie about the role of the church or the reason evil exists in the world. But by the time I got to the end of this book, I was profoundly moved. This is a work of art. If you have the fortitude to make it through this whole piece, there is a lot of powerful insight here. Also, for a text that is mostly pretty ponderous and wordy, the last third of it has a fair amount of action and I found myself surprised at how excited I was getting. The court scene at the end is absolute literary genius. I'll be honest. I started this book thinking it would be too boring to get through. By the end, I was fighting back tears. An unforgettable story, brilliantly narrated. I need to buy the paper copy because there are some quotes I need to highlight and put up on my wall.

This is easily the best version of the book I've tried. It is crisp, clear, focused and fast. By fast, I mean that it has narrative drive and speed, and never loses your interest. At 20 hours, it is the ideal length. In a book that needed surgery, the guy knew exactly where to cut. Not only is it abridged, however, it has been revised. The best thing he did was to dispense with the Russian patronymic. For example, he calls Ivan "Ivan," not "Ivan Fydorovich," which is an earful as well as a mouthful. Without sacrificing richness or depth--without sacrificing what makes Dostoevsky great--it reads like a contemporary novel in English, not a big, shaggy bear of a novel from the 19th century. I wish he'd do the same for "War and Peace."

I don't usually read abridged and didn't actually realise this was until I got it. Great story though and didn't seem overly "shortened" but I can't compare to the full version. Can really feel the author's emotion about his son who'd died before he wrote the book, and his feelings about approaching the end of his life (he died after writing this and had intended to continue the story).

I have wanted to read this book for so long, and so jumped at the chance to hear it so I would stop procrastinating. It sort of went right over my head, though. To me, the story line was a little dissatisfying and confusing. I had a hard time understanding why this book is regarded so highly.

I think I will read the Cliff Notes and perhaps some scholarly interpretation, and then try listening to it again.

No, the characters are all just so unpleasant and the story is nothing to get excited about. Half the time I found myself thinking "Who cares?" Add to that a boring delivery by the narrator means this is a book I wouldn't want to inflict on any friends.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

A damp squib. Like Dostoevsky just got fed up with writing and decided to end it there, and who can blame him?

Would you be willing to try another one of Simon Vance’s performances?

His characterizations were all the same and his delivery quite monotonous. The clearly well-to-do characters often had a north London twang to their accents, which was absolutely misplaced. So no, I would think twice before listening to another book read by Simon Vance.

If this book were a film would you go see it?

There is a Russian version and I'd be intrigued to see how they interpret the characters.

Any additional comments?

Plenty of better books out there.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

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